Adrian Ludlow, a novelist with a distinguished reputation and a book on the A-level syllabus, is now seeking obscurity in a cottage beneath the Gatwick flight path, with his wife Eleanor. Their old university friend Sam Sharp, now a hugely successful screenwriter, drops in on the way to Los Angeles, fuming over a vicious profile of himself by Rottweiler interviewer Fanny Tarrant in a Sunday newspaper. Together the two men decide to take revenge on the journalist, though Adrian is risking what he values most: his privacy.